The year 2012 was one of extremes in just about every facet of life – from weather to politics and everything in between. Hospitals sought to merge, cities supported their local police where it counted – with their wallets – Troy was mired in recall controversy, a local school board member was shot in a love triangle, the road to human rights was paved in Royal Oak, and a move is under way to change Oak Park’s standing as the largest dry city in the state.

As usual, there were rats — both literally and figuratively.

Here’s a rundown of the biggest stories that struck south Oakland County this year.

Voters show public safety departments the money

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Voters this year continued to shore up city budgets with tax increases to help communities overcome the dip in property taxes caused by the housing crisis.

Royal Oak voters in November approved what some called an overdue millage request to support police and fire operations in the city.

Voters in November passed a 3.9-mills tax hike passed by a 2-to-1 margin. The millage will cost the average Royal Oak homeowner about $269 more each year in taxes, but many said the price is worth it.

At the polls, some voters said the city couldn’t afford to trim costs and personnel forever. Others worried that police layoffs had left the department significantly understaffed.

“We need protection,” said Royal Oak voter Connie Horattas.

Royal Oak Mayor Jim Ellison said city officials would add 13 more police officers. Ellison said last month that he believed voters supported the police-and-fire millage because all city workers, including police officers and firefighters, had taken cuts in wages and benefits equal to 15 percent of their base pay.

“We can breathe a collective sigh of relief,” Ellison said of the voter-approved tax hike.

Similarly, Oak Park voters in November approved a 7-mill tax hike for seven years to support the pension system for Oak Park Public Safety officers to take pressure off the strained city budget.

Oak Park’s Public Safety Department this year lost about a quarter of its staffing — 15 officers — due to budget cuts. The new pension millage allowed the department to rehire three officers and the City Council will vote next year on whether there is enough money to bring back more officers.

“Voters have said they value public safety over all other city services,” Oak Park Mayor Marian McClellan said last month.

Voters in Clawson this year also approved a millage to support police and other city services. In August, Berkley voters overwhelmingly approved a 3-mill tax hike to support police and city services in that city.

In most communities, the biggest costs are for police and fire expenses because those departments typically employ the largest number of workers.

Last year, voters in Ferndale, Madison Heights and Oak Park also passed millages for police and fire services.

Beaumont, Henry Ford hospitals seek merger

Beaumont and Henry Ford health systems announced in late October they were seeking to merge their operations into a new $6.4 billion organization.

Beaumont, which is Royal Oak’s largest employer, is the smaller of the two hospital systems and last year reported about half the $4.2 billion in revenue that Henry Ford generated.

The two health systems embarked on a 120-day negotiation period, looking to combine Beaumont and Ford hospitals to become the largest health system in Southeast Michigan.

They are expected to reach an agreement in the first half of 2013. The merger would result in a total of 7,000 doctors and 42,000 employees in 10 hospitals and 200 patient-care sites.

Cost savings are driving the proposed merger, though officials said it would create a more convenient network of medical centers with better outcomes for patients because of the combined expertise of specialists.

It remains unclear how many positions might be cut as the two health systems seek to eliminate duplicated functions, pursue economies of scale and flex more muscle in negotiating reimbursement rates from insurers.

Hospital officials said the national Affordable Health Care Act, due to be fully implemented in 2014, along with reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payment reductions, are spurring 75 percent of health care leaders nationwide to pursue similar hospital partnerships.

Ex-Royal Oak principal guilty of embezzlement

Michael Greening, formerly the popular principal at Royal Oak High School, pleaded guilty in December to embezzling cash from student activity accounts.

Greening, 46, pleaded guilty in Oakland County Circuit Court about a year after top school district officials first confronted him about missing money.

He was charged earlier this year with taking about $15,000 from different student accounts that were stored in a safe before being deposited at the bank. Greening was accused of taking cash and rewriting the dollar amounts on the cash deposit slips.

Prosecutors in preliminary hearings in Royal Oak 44th District Court introduced evidence showing Greening and his wife faced mounting personal debt and bounced hundreds of checks in 2010-11.

Greening, when first confronted by school officials, admitted his handling of the accounts for student activities was “a nefarious idea,” according to testimony from the school district’s human resources director.

As Greening’s case began to wind its way through the court system, a number of students and parents showed up at hearings to support the embattled former principal. Supporters also created a Facebook page to rally behind Greening.

In the end, school board President Gary Briggs took a dim view of Greening allowing his supporters to continue backing him months after he had admitted to school officials he had taken money from student activity accounts.

“He allowed it to play out for almost a year,” Briggs said.

The charge of embezzling from $1,000 to $20,000 to which Greening pleaded guilty is a five-year felony. He has no prior criminal history and is expected to receive anything from probation to six months in jail when he is sentenced next month.

Suburbs take on rats

The summer of 2012 produced a bumper crop of rat sightings in South Oakland County.

Pleasant Ridge joined with Royal Oak, Madison Heights, Berkley, Huntington Woods, Oak Park, Ferndale and Hazel Park to get a state grant to help battle rats.

County Commissioner Dave Woodward, D-Royal Oak, said rats were a major issue and pushed for a plan to deal with limiting the rat population.

Most cities in the region reported an increase in rats and exterminators said their calls were up this year.

Some blamed a mild winter and a dry, hot summer, while others pointed to road construction projects that often stir up rat populations.

Many, like Hazel Park City Manager Ed Klobucher, said that rats simply follow and thrive on available food sources left by careless humans.

Dr. William Pickhardt, an entomologist with American Pest Control in Troy, said there was an increase in the rat population in 2012.

Rats “are very, very smart and they will forage sometime for up to a half-mile,” he said. “The rat population is tied to the amount of food that is available to them.”

Human rights law proposed again for Royal Oak

Eleven years after city voters rejected a human rights ordinance that would have banned discrimination in housing and employment based on sexual orientation, another such proposal is in the works.

City Commissioners Kyle DuBuc and Jim Rasor last month asked that the city draft a human rights ordinance which would be voted on by the commission rather than city voters.

The ordinance would also ban discrimination based on a person’s weight and other factors.

Ann Arbor was the first city in the state to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1978, and Detroit followed the next year. Similar measures have been enacted since then in Birmingham, Ferndale, Huntington Woods, East Lansing, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Saginaw, Traverse City and Ypsilanti.

Royal Oak voters in 2001 rejected a human rights proposal by a 2-to-1 margin in a heated campaign that brought in conservative contributions from outside the city.

A human rights ordinance would send a message of tolerance, while its absence shows a lack of so-called “best practices” that cities are adopting to attract jobs and investment, Rasor said.

“We’re competing for labor, commerce and residents with other cities and we are at a disadvantage,” he said. “Successful communities embrace diversity and welcome everyone …”

New push for alcohol sales in Oak Park

A movement blossomed this year to overturn a nearly half-century ban on alcohol sales by the glass.

Zeana Attisha and her husband, Saad – owners of the Sahara restaurant at 10 Mile and Coolidge – have undertaken a petition drive to get the alcohol question before voters once again.

City voters upheld the ban on alcohol-by-the-glass sales in 1954, 1966 and 2005. The city allows alcohol only to be sold in bottles at stores.

Zeana Attisha said the ban is hurting business at her restaurant.

Nearby cities like Ferndale and Royal Oak have revived their downtowns with clubs, bars and restaurants over the past 15 years or so.

“We are … going to do everything we can to get this passed,” Attisha said last month. “There are a lot of businesses in the city in favor of this. They all feel we need something to attract more customers to our businesses and more traffic to Oak Park. People in Oak Park don’t have a place they can go to in their own city to have a drink with a meal or a beer to watch a football game. So, they go to other cities and spend their money there instead.”

Oak Park, with about 29,000 residents, is the largest of four dry cities in the state. There are also about 235 small townships that are dry statewide.

Prison officer shot to death

Returning to his Madison Heights apartment with his girlfriend, a Michigan Department of Corrections officer was fatally shot in the head by a gunman who emerged from a parked van.

Clarence Tariq Hammond III, 33, was still in his vehicle in the parking lot of the President Madison Apartments near 31700 Harlo when he was shot late Jan. 13.

The gunman and Hammond exchanged words before the shooter demanded money, police said.

His wife, Jeanmaire, and their boys Matt, 9, and Jack, 7, watched as Ducharme quietly accepted the recognition for the many wounds he suffered July 10, 1970 during his U.S. Army service.

He was drafted in 1969 and became an artillery specialist corporal.

To this day he has no recollection of how he was wounded when his unit was hit in an attack near the Cambodian border.

He spent nearly a year in the hospital and over the following two years doctors operated on him 60 times.

Ducharme lost a lung, and the left side of his face and his right hand were severely damaged.

He didn’t think about not getting a Purple Heart until one day several years ago when his family asked him what he had gotten for all the wounds he had received.

He decided to file the paperwork for the medal when he was filling out forms for his retirement with the Veterans Administration.

“I’m so proud he got it and is finally being recognized,” his wife Jeanmarie said.

School board member shot in love triangle

Madison Heights school board Trustee Melvin Rose was shot in the arm by his lover’s husband in front of the couple’s house on Aug. 12.

It wasn’t his first brush with controversy. In 2007, before he served on the school board, Rose appeared on the “Dr. Phil” TV show as a domestic abuser.

Rose, 33, first considered resigning his seat on the Board of Education but later changed his mind and still holds his position.

Rose struggled with the husband outside the married couple’s house on Edward Street about 3 a.m. Police said the husband suffered bite marks on his chest and right arm.

The husband had a gun that discharged and the bullet went completely through Rose’s arm, police said.

Rose said he had an affair with the husband’s wife, but she had told him she was getting divorced and her husband wouldn’t leave the house.

“I was played, big-time,” he said. “I feel sorry for the other guy because he got trapped in the same situation.”

Investigators were unable to determine whether the shot was accidental or intentional and no charges were ever filed.

However, Rose has a felony conviction on his record for domestic abuse in Macomb County.

He appeared on “Dr. Phil” five years ago with the mother of his children as an admitted stalker and domestic abuser.

Rose admitted to physically abusing his ex-girlfriend, whom Dr. Phil also criticized for leading Rose on and continuing to have sex with him.

Rose dismissed the episode when asked about it.

“That’s old news,” he said. “They dramatized everything. We were still together a couple of years after that.”

Troy mayor recalled

A year after Janice Daniels was elected Troy mayor, city voters recalled her from office.

The vote ousting her on Nov. 6 followed a rocky year.

In December 2011, an anti-gay posting Daniels had made on her Facebook page six months earlier gained wide currency.

“I think I’m going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that gays can get married there,” she wrote.

Her opposition to a federally funded transit center stirred up the City Council. In January, a Troy High School student said Daniels told members of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance that homosexuality is a mental illness.

Many were stunned weeks later when she read a letter into the record berating the city manager for supporting the transit center. County Executive L. Brooks Patterson then publicly criticized Daniels for her attack on the city manager.